and I will try to fix you
by all-delightedpeople
Summary: Special Education through New York. A series of drabbles from Rachel's point of view.


**I.**

When Rachel was six years old, she broke her daddy's treasured Tiffany lamp shade. It was an accident, of course – the result of overextended jazz hands during a too-enthusiastic rendition of _Hello, Dolly_) – but all the same he'd cried and _cried_ as he swept up those shards of glass that glittered across the hardwood floor.

Now, looking at the golden chain pooled in the palm of her hand, at those glinting letters, Rachel thinks of that lamp shade and knows that time she's broken something much more valuable.

(And the worst part is that it's not even an accident).

She wonders if maybe she's broken too.

**II.**

For a while, Rachel thinks she can fix it all – with a song, with a kiss, with the lush smell of evergreen like perfume all around them.

But it doesn't work, and worse, it makes Finn angry, and when he shouts that vitriol into her face, Rachel knows she's never been more_ ashamed_.

And even though it's over – really, truly, over _for good_ this time – he's still her ride.

She cries the whole way home. He turns up the radio, pretends not to notice.

**III.**

She decides it doesn't matter if Finn sees no fireworks when they kiss, because Rachel Barbra Berry is a firework herself, and she doesn't need the love of any _puerile_ boy to prove it.

So she chooses a song that embodies this new mantra and belts it with all the force she can muster, shouts it 'till her throat is red and raw.

(She thinks that if she sings it loud enough, she might start believing it herself).

But still, his words won't stop playing in her head: _Just because I can't be with you, doesn't mean I don't believe in you_.

Rachel wonders why she can never be the girl who has it all.

**IV.**

_I liked the Rachel I saw in there today_.

She hates herself for being so weak – for loving those words, for holding them close, for turning them round and round in her mind until they are as smooth as sea glass.

But how can Rachel be expected to maintain her façade of indifference with the feeling of his hand still burning on her shoulder like a brand?

She wants to tell him that _this Rachel_ has been here all along.

**V.**

With alcohol thumping in her veins and Finn's cold dismissal digging into her side like a barb, Rachel is emboldened – and even more than that, she's _angry_.

So she proposes a game of spin-the-bottle with as much spite as she can muster, because she doesn't want to make him jealous, she wants to make him _hurt_.

(And somewhere deep inside she knows she's just making the same mistakes all over again but old habits die hard and she's been drunk for hours).

But when she kisses Blaine, it's like a revelation – a momentary lightness – and for a while Rachel pretends that maybe she could love him, if she tried hard enough. Maybe he could be a salve on old wounds.

It's a short-lived fantasy. When Blaine tells her he's gay, the only thing she can feel is _relief. _

**VI.**

Rachel doesn't believe in celibacy, not really.

But she doesn't believe in much anymore, so why not pretend?

She always thought her first time would be with _him. _

(And her second and her third and her hundredth).

**VII.**

She isn't surprised, really, when she finds out they're together.

But still, it doesn't hurt any less.

_But Quinn's a cheater_, Rachel thinks, and she smothers the thought. _You're no better, _she reminds herself, _you're just the same._

(Then why can't she be forgiven too?)

**VIII.**

_Break a leg_ he says, and the memory almost knocks the air out of Rachel's lungs.

_Last time we were here you told me you loved me_.

She knows she shouldn't say it – he _is_ someone else's boyfriend after all – but the sentence is tumbling out of her mouth before she can ponder the moral ramifications.

He doesn't take the bait anyway, deflecting her intentions like light through a prism.

_I really like your song_, he says, and Rachel wonders if he knows that he _is_ the song, if he can see himself reflected in every carefully chosen syllable.

Later, when she catches his eye during her performance, she feels this tug in her gut. She thinks maybe it's called _hope_.

**IX.**

_It ain't no way for me to love you  
>If you won't let me<em>

Rachel presses a hand against her chest, but it can't cut the sting of Mercedes' words as she glances into the crowd and sees _him_, arm draped casually around Quinn's narrow shoulders.

She just wants Finn to let her love him.

But sometimes, what she wants most of all is to _stop_.

**X.**

You're beautiful. You're beautiful. You're beautiful. You're beautiful. You're beautiful. You're beautiful.

It isn't much, really. But it's _enough_.

**XI.**

When they leave Sam's dingy motel room, Rachel feels a hard knot of tears lodge itself in the back of her throat. She swallows around it, thickly.

_Are you alright?_

Rachel covers her face with the sleeve of her coat. _Fine_, she says, _I'm fine_.

But he has his arms around her before she can stop him, before she can push him away, before she can patch up the holes in the walls of her resolve. And Rachel sighs into him despite herself – into his warmth, into the contours of his body, into that familiar boy smell.

They stand like that for a long, long time.

**XII.**

Rachel meets his eyes boldly when she sings her solo, feels the tension hanging between them like a taut rope.

_Don't come back for me_, she sings, to no one but him. _Don't come back at all_.

She doesn't mean it, as much as she tries to.

She doesn't mean it at all. 

**XIII.**

When the orchestra begins to play the opening bars of _My Man_, Rachel screws her eyes shut, and she can't stop the image it conjures in the darkness of her closed lids.

It had been a Wednesday, and Finn was waiting at her locker after third period Biology like always – but there was something special about his smile that day, about the way it lit up just for her, split his face in two.

She opens her eyes, feels the gaping wound in her chest, and tries to fill the hole with song. 

**XIV.**

_I can't._

Rachel doesn't remember when she became the one running. 

**XV.**

She'd almost forgotten what it felt like to lose herself in a kiss – a heart-stopping, lung-constricting, ground-spinning sort of kiss.

Rachel opens her eyes, meeting his, sharing a look of mingled awe and confusion.

_I can_, she tries to tell him, in the space of those few silent seconds. _I can_.

**XVI.**

When he laces her hand through hers in the hallway,en route to the final Glee meeting of the year, Rachel can feel pieces of her heart in the spaces between all his fingers.

She thinks maybe they've been there all along.

_Fin._


End file.
